Extend Yourself to Others ~ How do you extend yourself to others?

Extend Yourself to Others ~ How do you extend yourself to others?
Key Verse:
Ephesians 5:1-2, NIV Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children; and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Related: Bible Verses About Discipleship, Imitating God & Imitating Christ

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I have a friend. Her name is Maxine.

Maxine is a pretty lady with a pretty heart. She is fun to be around, easy going, cheerful, and very easy to talk to. One day, I stumbled on something she had written:

“Extend yourself to another’s self
That’s the beginning of Love
God took the initiative
And extended His self to man” ~ Maxine Totoe

She then went on to explain what she meant – “ to go beyond your comfort zone….”

Extend Yourself to Others
Maxine’s words spoke volumes to me. I started thinking about different things – For instance, how easy it is for me to relate with and “extend myself” to Maxine, especially since I don’t find anything weird about her. I started thinking about my other friends too (all of whom I’m so blessed to have)… The wise ones. The quiet ones. The talkative ones. The ones I can trust to always have something funny to say. The ones that would give me the last shirt on their back. The easy going ones. The upbeat ones. The serious ones. The ever active ones. The ever interesting ones, and so on… Each one of them blessing me in their own way, with their own “package”. Everyone with their own different character, and their own unique approach to life.

We are all packaged differently, and yes, some people are naturally just drawn to certain other kinds of people. Certain qualities may attract you to a person, and make you want to get to know them better (like those qualities I listed about Maxine above have drawn me to her). And that’s definitely fine! It’s always so wonderful to find people we share things in common with, people we admire, people we find easy to talk to, who are fun, and share our ideals… it’s really great and certainly makes life a lot more interesting.

On the other hand, every once in a while, we may come across someone we may find, at the very least at first glance, a little “weird”. Some people might do certain things sometimes that make you go “hmm????” To you, what they are doing is weird. But there is so much more to them than that “weird” thing that you have just seen or experienced… There’s a whole package, much more than that aspect of their character that you may not fully understand.

You’re weird. I’m weird. We’re all weird, in some way.
Thinking about it, what’s weird anyway? What seems “weird” or unusual to one person is perfectly normal to someone else. Plus, we are all kind of weird in our own way, aren’t we? I know I’ve done many things that I consider weird thinking about now. And I know I’ll probably look back again and think the same thing about several other things later on. With every passing day, we are all growing and discovering ourselves more and more… And we all have certain aspects of our whole person that might be considered a little “weird” by at least some. But that’s certainly not all there is to us…

How do you extend yourself to others?
As we have seen above, God is the ultimate example of what it means to extend yourself to others. God extended himself to us in the form of Jesus Christ in the flesh. How do we extend ourselves to others? Thinking more about what “extending yourself to others” and “going out of your comfort zone” means to me – it means – knowing when to look past stuff that I may find a little “weird”, going out of my comfort zone and always truly loving others as God wants me to, and as God has shown me by example. After all, we are all kind of weird in some way, so at the very least we all have that in common, right? 🙂 See also: Follow God’s Example in Everything You Do

Now, please understand that this is not to say that we can excuse our wrong behavior, behavior that we know is not pleasing to God, as being “weird”. For instance, I can’t say – “Oh, I love stealing, I love bullying, I love backbiting, I love being abusive to others – but take me as I am, I’m just different, that’s how God made me!” Absolutely not… that’s not being weird (as described in this post), it’s just plain wrong. In that case, we need to work on ourselves, with God’s help, to change those wrong attitudes and start acting in a manner that will be pleasing to God. Amen!
Read More: Bible Verses about God’s Approval, Pleasing God; What Makes God Happy?

So please, if you ever have the opportunity to “extend yourself to another”, or to “go out of your comfort zone”, whatever that might mean to you personally – please, let’s do it with God’s help, Amen!

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Thanks for reading, Dear Friends!
Have a wonderfully blessed, stress-free, productive, and joyful day!
Much Love & Blessings,
Bomi Jolly ~ JollyNotes.com
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Don’t go yet:)! I think you’ll also enjoy:
– There is Time for Everything
– Dealing with Disappointment
– I am Fearfully & Wonderfully Made!